Least socially conservative Reagan possible

What's the least socially conservative that Reagan could possibly have been? His economic and foreign policy can stay as it was OTL.
 
He was the governor who legalized abortion in California. It’s actually pretty doable.

He also opposed the Briggs Initiative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briggs_Initiative

Still, I think it was always likely he would reverse himself on abortion. He agreed to liberalization of the abortion laws in California back when the opposition was mainly Catholic. When conservative Protestant denominations also moved toward opposition after Roe v. Wade, it was likely that conservative politicians would follow.
 
A Disturbance of Fate features a more libertarian leaning Ronald Reagan (favour legalized abortion and marijuana) squaring off against an incumbent Bobby Kennedy who survived his assassination attempt in 1968. While the book is far-fetched in many places, I could see either a victorious Humphrey in 1968 or a surviving RFK (who I don't think would have gotten the nomination but would be in analogous position to where Bernie Sanders is now after Election Day) leading to greater retention of the New Deal coalition in a more multiracial, Catholic direction with a "broad tent" approach to abortion meaning that Reagan can afford to be more socially liberal.
 
I think you need a POD quite far back (possibly some sort of personal experience?) but a socially liberal yet foreign policy hawkish Reagan is a definite possibility without rousing the ASB from his cage.
 
I think you need a POD quite far back (possibly some sort of personal experience?) but a socially liberal yet foreign policy hawkish Reagan is a definite possibility without rousing the ASB from his cage.

Wasn't he good friends with Rock Hudson? Maybe something happening to Hudson - an expose or whatever - leads him to be more publicly supportive of at least some gay rights.
 
Wasn't he good friends with Rock Hudson? Maybe something happening to Hudson - an expose or whatever - leads him to be more publicly supportive of at least some gay rights.

As I already noted, Reagan opposed the Briggs Initiative, writing an op-ed piece against it:

"Proposition 6 rests on several assumptions. The two most frequently mentioned are that teachers can influence the sexual orientation of children because they are “role models” and that homosexual teachers will molest their pupils. Briggs told an interviewer the other [day] that “Everybody knows that homosexuals are child molesters. Not all of them, but most of them. I mean, that’s why they are in the teaching profession.”

"Although statistics are not kept nationally, informed observers usually put the percentage of child molesting cases by homosexuals at well under 10 percent. The overwhelming majority of such cases are committed by heterosexual males against young females.

"As to the “role model” argument, a woman writing to the editor a Southern California newspaper said it all: “If teachers had such power over children I would have been a nun years ago.”

"Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this..."

https://web.archive.org/web/2017081...ves/2010/10/ronald-reagan-and-gay-rights.html
 
He agreed to liberalization of the abortion laws in California back when the opposition was mainly Catholic.

Reagan reversed his original pro-choice stance while running against Ford in 1976, likely to appeal to the GOP's new social conservative base in the South. Jesse Helms of North Carolina was a key supporter of Reagan after all. Had Rockefeller not imploded in 1964 and gone on to win the nomination only to lose to LBJ, like Dewey two decades earlier he could be the front-runner in 1968 and he'd very likely win that year. This would butterfly away Nixon's Southern Strategy (which had it's roots in the '50's but wasn't set in stone until Nixon), and probably butterfly the GOP's shift to being an anti-Roe, anti-gay, "dog whistle" racist party and this could prevent Reagan from flip-flopping on abortion. (Not that he would be a guns-blazing pro-choice politician either, like many Democrats and Republicans at the time he would have to roll out the "I respect the Supreme Court" talking point to avoid offending too many people on either side of the issue).

When conservative Protestant denominations also moved toward opposition after Roe v. Wade, it was likely that conservative politicians would follow.

It's crucial to note that Southern Protestants were generally pro-choice - many important pastors actually praised Roe v. Wade - until they realized that abortion could be used to unite Catholics and Protestants as one conservative political and religious force. The whole point of this was to rebel against Nixon's decisions to enforce school integration and remove tax-exempt status for Christian schools that were engaging in racist discrimination. (It's also worth noting that, according to Nixon biographer John Farrell, all of this was done quietly to avoid angering Strom Thurmond). There's no post-1900 POD that could avoid this particular outcome, but if both the Democrats and Republicans remain socially moderate to liberal after the Civil Rights Movement and neither party makes right-wing nutjobs part of their national coalition (again, butterflying Nixon is a good start) then whatever Republican is elected in the 1980s probably wouldn't be vocally anti-choice or do nothing about the AIDS crisis in order to appease Jerry Falwell.

Not that any of this is extremely likely, but if the goal of this thread is to prevent the Gipper from going off the deep end on social issues then that's one way to do it...
 
I'm imagining a Reagan who says, "I believe in freedom at home and abroad, not theocracy and incarceration," and, "The only thing you should just say no to is big government".
 
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Maybe a more successful Goldwater run would help with this. After all, Goldwater was in most respects socially libertarian and if his defeat wasn't quite the blowout, it's possible Reagan would see it as possible to be more like him and still win.

Some other ideas:
A more pro-life Democratic Party might encourage the GOP to be moderate on abortion. Maybe if RFK survives and doesn't become president, but the influence of pro-life Catholics remains strong in the Democratic Party.
Perhaps if the Briggs Initiative passes and some of the consequences are felt, Reagan might become more sympathetic to the gay rights movement (yes, he opposed the Briggs Initiative already, but if it actually went into effect, I could see him going from "homosexuality is bad but so is this level of banning it" to "what goes on in the bedroom should not be the government's business")
Perhaps in his Hollywood days, Reagan tries marijuana or some other drugs at some point-albeit without getting caught, of course. The experience makes him more cavalier about drugs and less interested in enforcing hardline drug policies.
 
How socially conservative was Reagan really? Not the mythological Reagan who has been created over the past three decades but the real one? He gave lip service to a lot of issues important to social conservatives and made ridiculous suggestions like a constitutional amendment in favor of school prayer (like that was going to happen) but what did he accomplish? I'm talking about things he said or even views he may have held but what did he actually do?

I get the War on Drugs but I see that as broader than just social conservatism.
 
didn't he turn conservative due to nancy's influence on him? I know he was fairly left wing before then. maybe have him stay married to his first wife and continue being a democrat
 
didn't he turn conservative due to nancy's influence on him? I know he was fairly left wing before then. maybe have him stay married to his first wife and continue being a democrat

From my understanding, his stint at GE made a bigger difference. Once his film career sputtered and he retired as head of SAG, he had to take lower profile gigs in order to continue making a living and that eventually included working as a spokesman for GE. There, he came under the political influence of hardline right-wing businessmen as he had to advocate for their corporate brands and products. Reagan himself described this experience as a "crash course" in political science that dramatically changed his political thinking.

Oh, before Nancy, Ronald Reagan had already been married to a conservative Republican actress named Jane Wyman. Reagan himself never talked about this at length publically, but supposedly the biggest reason they split was because of their political differences. (It's worth emphasizing that at this time Reagan was the head of SAG and a politically active Liberal Democrat). So a POD involving his private life probably wouldn't change anything. Had Reagan not started working corporate he probably would have remained a New Deal liberal and that butterflies his eventual turn to the hard right.
 
How socially conservative was Reagan really? Not the mythological Reagan who has been created over the past three decades but the real one? He gave lip service to a lot of issues important to social conservatives and made ridiculous suggestions like a constitutional amendment in favor of school prayer (like that was going to happen) but what did he accomplish? I'm talking about things he said or even views he may have held but what did he actually do?

I get the War on Drugs but I see that as broader than just social conservatism.
Bill Clinton did alot of the economic/social conservatism people credit to Reagan. Well him and others helped solidify the conservative consensus that's only begun to break down last decade.
 
Bill Clinton did alot of the economic/social conservatism people credit to Reagan. Well him and others helped solidify the conservative consensus that's only begun to break down last decade.

What did Bill Clinton do that was socially conservative? My recollection is sketchy, but I seem to remember it being said that his welfare-reform penalized out-of-wedlock births, but I think the overall thrust of that was fiscal, not moral.

And he endorsed the DOMA, probably for reasons of political survival. Certainly a SoCon move, but it has to be said that same-sex marriage wasn't really a mainstream position at that time(even liberals up in Canuckistan weren't pushing for it), and I think that should be balanced off with nominating socially liberal judges to the Supreme Court.

Whereas Reagan is the guy who sent Scalia to the Supreme Court, and only sent Kennedy after Bork was found to be too much of a wackjob and Ginsburg was revealed as a toker. And almost certainly would have endorsed a DOMA if anyone was talking about gay marriage in the 80s(which they weren't).
 
And I agree with interpoltomo that the War On Drugs is ideologically different from social conservativism. It's more what we would call Soccer Momism, to retrofit terminology from a few years later.
 
And I agree with interpoltomo that the War On Drugs is ideologically different from social conservativism. It's more what we would call Soccer Momism, to retrofit terminology from a few years later.

That’s the way that seems more natural for one party to go, being generally moderate but conservative/reactionary on things that soccer mom’s would oppose, with the rest of their positions either based on working class or upper class issues depending on whether its the Dems or the GOP.
 
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